


Mirror, Sword and Shield

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Permanent Injury, Physical Disability, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 02, Slow Burn, background Peggy/Jason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-14 01:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7992814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his shooting, struggling physically and emotionally, Jack moves in with Daniel to recover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Daniel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pokolips](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pokolips/gifts).



> Title is loosely adapted from Coldplay's "Viva La Vida"; anachronistic song lyric titles ahoy!

There was always a sense of anticlimax after a case, but Daniel had rarely had it hit him this hard before. Yesterday, they'd saved the world -- even if the world would never know -- and he'd almost been sucked into a hole in reality. Today he was facing a sea of paperwork, an ongoing corruption investigation that had already claimed a third of the agents from his already understaffed office, and the prospect of trying to reestablish some kind of routine after weeks of whirlwind activity.

And he was about to be alone. Jack would already be on a flight back to the East Coast, and Peggy was at the Stark mansion ... with Jason. She'd been by a little earlier to drop off some reports and let Daniel know that she wasn't going back to New York with Jack; she was taking some more vacation time. A _real_ vacation this time, she'd said, and the smile she gave him was warm and a little sad. She hadn't brought up Jason's name. She didn't have to. Daniel could read between the lines just fine.

It was hard not to get hung up on what-ifs and might-have-beens -- hard to smile at her and tell her that he hoped she had fun. But he meant it. Peggy had earned a break, and Daniel was going to do what he could to stop the coming political shitstorm from falling on her head. Jack ... well ... Jack was going to do whatever Jack wanted to do. Daniel didn't even know what that was anymore. He wondered if Jack did either.

A month ago, he'd known exactly what _he_ wanted. Everything had made sense. The West Coast SSR was finally up and running, he was going to ask Violet to marry him, and for the first time since the war, he could see the shape of his future stretching out ahead of him. And it didn't frighten him; it didn't echo like a dark and empty chamber.

And then Peggy _and_ Jack both came back into his life, throwing everything into disarray ... as they usually did. He hadn't been expecting the torch he was still carrying for Peggy to flare up like a Fourth of July firework. Now it was guttering, leaving him dealing with an ache he'd already put behind him once before. Peggy was moving on with her life, sure and confident, as she always was.

As for Daniel, he'd blown things up with Violet, the SSR might be dissolving if the corruption scandal went as high as it seemed to, and the future was a giant question mark once again.

"Are you all right?" Peggy asked gently, as he saw her to the door of his office.

"Don't know why I wouldn't be."

"You saved the world, you know," she said, jogging his elbow lightly with her arm.

"And you saved _me._ You and ... everyone." His mind went back, as it had more than once, to that moment of mingled elation and exhaustion immediately after the rift had closed, when his eyes had been drawn not to Peggy but past her, to Jack, who was staring at him with a look of relief that was about the most open and honest expression he'd ever seen on Jack's face -- until, a second later, Jack covered with a glossy smile and turned to talk to Samberly. Daniel wasn't sure why _that_ had been fixed in his mind as a touchstone of the whole experience. 

"Which is not to say," he added to Peggy at the door, "that your actions weren't ill-advised and reckless."

"Oh really," she said, hand on hip.

"By your own rules, you should've let me get sucked into the rift and then shut it down. Big darned hypocrite, Peggy Carter, that's what you are."

"Look who's talking," Peggy said with an indelicate snort, and then caught him in a hug. "Ah, Daniel," she said, and rested her cheek against his for a moment. "You're a fine man. I would be happy to go shake some sense into Violet on your behalf, if you think it would help."

"Violet is a ship that's sailed, I'm afraid." 

"Well, there are many fish in the sea," she pointed out.

"I'll keep that in mind the next time I'm picking up dates at the fish market."

He held her in his arms for a moment longer, allowing himself that one instant to ache for what might have been -- and then put her gently but firmly aside, in his head and in the real world. They were still friends, good friends, and Daniel knew well enough how rare _that_ was. Most of all he wanted her to be happy, and if Jason made her happy, he was going to have to be all right with that. 

And he was. Mostly.

"Have a good vacation," he told her. "Oh, if you're going to be in town for a little while yet, we might need you to come in for depositions on some of Vernon's guys --"

And of course it was at that instant that his phone rang. "Hold on," Daniel told her, holding up a finger, and took a hopping step back to his desk. "Chief Sousa."

A few terse sentences on the other end of the line from Rose, who'd taken the call from Jack's hotel, sent his world imploding.

"Daniel," Peggy said as he hung up the phone. "Daniel, what's wrong?"

He looked up at her, pulling himself back together, and all he could think was _thank God_ she hadn't left yet, because Peggy was sensible and Peggy was smart, and he needed a rock of stability to balance himself against. "Jack's been shot."

Hearing those words had torn something right down to the core of him, and he wasn't even sure why. All he knew was that he still couldn't get his breath.

"Vernon?" Peggy asked succinctly.

"I don't know if it's related. Nobody knows anything yet." _They don't know who did it, and they don't know if he's going to make it,_ had been Rose's words. He started for the door, realized that he'd forgotten his crutch only when Peggy retrieved it from the wall and held it out to him.

 

***

 

Rose's intel was, as usual, top-notch: they even beat the city police there, arriving just as Jack was being loaded into the ambulance. Blood everywhere, that was what Daniel saw first -- all that blood, and Jack's face so white it looked gray. Despite the California sunshine, it threw him straight back to Bastogne for a heart-stopping instant, back to blood-soaked, half-frozen mud, back to trying to hold in the guts of friends while hot blood welled between his numb fingers. 

Then Jack turned his head to the side, eyelids fluttering. Peggy started to move but Daniel got there first. Jack's blood-slick fingers closed on Daniel's shirt.

"Who did this?" Daniel demanded. His voice came out harsh, and all he could think was that Jack was supposed to be unassailable, a jerk whose thick skin deflected the insults of the world, and maybe its bullets too. Jack had come through the war untouched; he wasn't supposed to die _here,_ in a California parking lot.

Jack's voice was a breathy whisper, and Daniel had to lean close to the blood-flecked lips to hear. "Didn't know him. Male, white, brown hair -- about my height --" And then he broke off the professional litany, coughing, choking, and Daniel was being pushed back so someone could move forward to inject something into Jack's arm. Someone else came forward to put pressure on Jack's chest, pushing Peggy away -- the first Daniel realized that she had closed in behind him, too, laying her hand on Jack's sheet-covered body.

The back door of the ambulance slammed shut, and Daniel stared at it, thinking that this couldn't happen, they were _safe,_ they weren't supposed to survive everything they'd survived just to have everything fall down around them like this --

"Daniel," Peggy said in a clear, firm voice, drawing him out of his own head and back to reality. "What did he say? I couldn't hear."

"The shooter was a man, and Jack didn't know him." Daniel took a deep breath, getting himself together. He hadn't expected this to shake him like it had, but he was already packing it away, getting himself back together. They had a crime to solve. Someone thought they could take a shot at an SSR chief, and even with the SSR in its current state, that was a goddamn insult and he wasn't going to stand for it. "He can't be long gone. Let's see what the hotel staff saw."

 

***

 

The next three days ran into a long blur of detective gruntwork and medical crises, punctuated with the need to beat down the occasional political brushfire related to the SSR's slow corruption-related implosion.

Daniel lived on coffee, slept when Peggy made him, and otherwise seemed to be dividing his time between the SSR and the hospital. Jack's medical status was a nonstop roller coaster: he was out of surgery and improving, but his heart had stopped twice on the table; then he was back in surgery with more bleeding; then he was through that, but a different doctor was telling Daniel that the bullet had lodged close to his spine and they didn't know if there would be permanent damage ...

He looked so ... _fragile,_ that was the awful thing. He looked like he was made of glass, like he'd crumble at a careless touch. Peggy sat with him sometimes, and they had a guard on him when neither of them could be there, but it was Daniel who usually took the late-night watches, when the hospital was almost deserted -- that dark cold hour of the night when, as he knew all too well from the war, the dying were most likely to slip through the barrier between this world and whatever lay beyond.

"I don't get it," he told Jack softly, reaching out to dab petroleum jelly on Jack's dry, cracked lips. The blinds were half open to the city's lights -- a very different spread of lights from New York, not the faux old-world dazzle of Manhattan but the glitter and glitz of a very young city wearing its skirts of newfound wealth like a _nouveau riche_ country bride. "I don't know when you got under my skin like this. Hell, I've spent half the time I've known you wanting to strangle you."

He hesitated with his thumb resting against Jack's lips, feeling the dry warmth of his breath. He couldn't help thinking of something he'd almost forgotten until Jack's arrival in L.A. brought it all rushing back: the last time they'd seen each other in New York.

The office had held a going-away party for Daniel, a raucous night in the SSR's favorite bar, with drinks flowing freely and a hired dancer who was hilariously terrible. (Several of the men were scandalized to have Peggy there, but she'd laughed along with the rest of them, and joined them in tipping the poor girl at the end.)

As the night wore on, Daniel had felt himself slipping farther and farther away from the cheerful camaraderie around him. He was leaving, after all. His eyes kept going back to Peggy, laughing while the men vied to buy her drinks, and he told himself that all he had to do was walk across the room, buy her a damned drink -- why was it so _hard._

But it seemed that the things that mattered most were always the hardest. He was leaving anyway. The paperwork was done. There was nothing he could do now except hurt both of them.

The party had taken on a life of its own, and no one seemed to notice when Daniel, morose and more than halfway to being drunk, slipped out into the chilly New York night.

Or he'd thought no one noticed, until Jack fell into step with him suddenly on the street. "The guest of honor isn't supposed to run away."

"Clearing my head. Piss off."

Jack laughed softly. "So the choirboy has a foul mouth after all."

"I'm not in the mood, Jack. And you're not my boss anymore, so you can't order me back in there."

Daniel realized that he was angry. Spoiling for a fight, in fact. A year's worth of suppressed resentment rose up in him, resentment of everything that Jack _was_ , and most particularly the way he seemed to glide through life without letting it touch him. Only Jack Thompson could step in muck and come out smelling like roses. He'd gotten his current position as chief of the SSR on the back of Peggy's hard work, and Daniel had seen the way he'd treated her since then; he recognized that it was Jack's own guilt making him come down harder on Peggy than on anyone else in the office, but that didn't make it right.

"Why'd you recommend me for the new bureau chief, anyway?" he demanded. "Trying to get rid of me?"

There was a flash in Jack's eyes, just for an instant, and Daniel realized he'd scored a hit. That _was_ actually part of it, and that pissed him off even more, especially when Jack slipped his hands into his pockets and slouched in that loose, casual way he had. _I haven't a care and I'm not listening to you anyway,_ that slouch seemed to say.

"If you don't want the promotion, Sousa, just say so."

Daniel took a lurching step forward, getting right up in his face. "What the hell do _you_ want, Jack?"

They were very close together, and a livewire of emotion vibrated between them. Jack was looking into his face, and there was anger there, and concern, and a lot of other things. 

A wild, reckless urge rose up in Daniel: it would be easy, so easy, to bridge the distance between them and kiss the bastard. It wasn't like he'd never thought about it before. He had spent his entire life grappling with that part of himself, the part that found men as appealing as women, alternately giving in to it and trying to deny that it was part of him -- but it _was_ part of him, and from the beginning, even when he couldn't stand Jack, he wasn't immune to the man's raw sex appeal. He didn't love Jack, didn't want to love him, but from time to time Jack had figured in his fantasies. Angry fantasies, most of them: tying him up, making him beg, proving to both of them that a man with one leg could take down the SSR's golden boy.

But he'd never been so tempted, with anger and alcohol thrumming in his veins, to make good on those scorching, bitter fantasies. It would ruin both their careers, and probably make Jack punch him in the face, and right now, he was angry and hurt enough that he _wanted_ it.

And he almost -- almost -- got the impression that Jack was opening his mouth to receive --

Then Jack caught him by the shoulders.

"You're drunk, Sousa," he said softly. "Go home, sleep it off, and get on that plane in the morning. You got a whole new life waiting for you out in L.A."

"I thought I had a life here," Daniel said, almost plaintively.

"God," Jack muttered. He gave Daniel a sort of a sloppy hug, steering him around to point at the street. "I'm gonna pour you into a cab, okay? Spending sixteen hours on a jet plane with a hangover is gonna be your payback for all of this."

Daniel leaned on him, the anger draining out of him, leaving only weariness and loss and the spinning awareness that he was a lot drunker than he wanted to be.

It felt _good_ like this, just leaning against Jack, resting against the man's solid warmth with Jack's muscular arm around his shoulders. He closed his eyes to try to stop the spinning -- it didn't help; the darkness behind his closed lids kept sliding sideways -- and let Jack hold him up.

And then he was being decanted into a cab, Jack leaning in to give the driver Daniel's address, which was the first time Daniel had been aware that Jack not only knew it, but knew it well enough to remember it off the top of his head. _He's your boss now,_ he reminded himself, but that still seemed like an oddly specific piece of trivia for a boss to remember about the men who worked for him.

He twisted around in his seat, looking back. Jack was gazing after the cab, a small figure receding on the sidewalk, hands shoved into his pockets and his blond head bare. 

What Daniel still remembered most about it was how alone he'd looked there, a tiny figure about to be crushed by the weight of the city looming above him.

There was a similar fragility to Jack in the hospital bed now, he realized. The force of Jack's personality, the vitality of his more-than-healthy ego, the way he had of twisting probability around him so that he came out on top no matter what ... all of those things made him seem invulnerable, uncrushable, as if it was a law of nature that Jack Thompson would always be there, cracking wise and swaggering to claim a win, even if he hadn't earned it.

But this time, he'd lost. And it made Daniel realize, looking down at the figure in the bed (not the larger-than-life chief of the New York SSR, but a badly injured man, helpless and incapacitated) that there was no way to be sure how much of Jack's bravado was a front. Daniel had seen the cracks showing, that night when Peggy held the gun on him; it was the first time he'd seen that side of Jack, raw and scared and standing up anyway. For reasons he couldn't quite put his finger on, it had made him like Jack more than he ever had before.

And sitting here now, willing Jack's heart to keep beating, he was all too aware of how much the guy had gotten under his skin over the last year and a half. Somehow he'd gone from genuine dislike to ... well ... something he couldn't define, really. He'd found out that when he and Jack relaxed around each other, they could work in sync as well as he and Peggy could. It was just that they seemed to nettle each other without even trying. It had been a relief coming three time zones west and no longer having to take orders from Jack, but he'd also looked forward to the almost-daily phone calls back east, even when half the time it was nothing more than an opportunity for the two of them to snipe at each other.

And only now, looking back on that night in New York without his own anger and loneliness getting in the way, he recognized the genuine concern in the way Jack had acted toward him: going after him, seeing him safely into a cab and off to his apartment. Concern and affection ... and he'd never been completely blind to Jack's affection toward him; he'd recognized Jack's slightly clumsy attempts to make friends for what they were. He just didn't know how he wanted to respond, because he couldn't forget the _other_ side of Jack: the egotist, the emotional saboteur.

He didn't know if he could trust Jack enough to be friends with him, let alone ... anything else.

Daniel spread another smear of Vaseline across Jack's slack lips with the tip of his finger, then touched it lightly to his own lips. And closed his eyes.

_Just wake up, damn you. We can figure all this out later. The important thing is ... just wake up._


	2. Jack

Jack floundered awake in stages, surfacing slowly from confused fever-dreams that bounced back and forth between the jungles of the South Pacific and the boardrooms of California and DC, from monsters pointing guns at him to his own hands dripping with blood.

He was vaguely aware that he'd been in and out for a while, never quite sure what was real and what wasn't, but the first solid memory he had was of Daniel Sousa asleep beside his hospital bed.

For a little while, with part of his mind still mired in dreams, Jack just looked at him. Daniel was slumped on a chair beside the bed, head against the wall. Someone had tucked a blanket over him, but it had fallen down, pooling in his lap. He was wearing a couple days' worth of stubble and his hair had come down over his forehead, giving Jack an inexplicable urge to reach out and brush it back.

He'd always liked Daniel, ever since he actually started to _see_ him as something other than the butt of the office jokes. Daniel might drive him bonkers sometimes, but it was hard not to like him. That moment, though -- he wouldn't realize it until later, but surfacing from drugs, sick and dazed and hurting, and finding Daniel asleep at his bedside, was probably the moment that he started to love him.

At the time, he recognized it only as a warmth that flooded him, not enough to make the pain and discomfort less ... but it didn't _matter,_ somehow. Someone was waiting for him to wake up.

He tried to sit up a little, and that made him start to cough, which was truly awful. He was dimly aware of Daniel waking up, sitting up with a sharp gasp, but the struggle with the ripping pain in his chest consumed him enough that he wasn't aware of much else until the cool rim of a glass touched his lips and a firm hand cupped under his head, and Daniel's voice said, "Drink."

He did. It helped, and also made him aware that he was desperately, painfully thirsty, so thirsty that his throat cramped on the lukewarm water. Daniel took it away before he'd had enough, and Jack scowled up at him with a croaked, "Hey."

"I don't want to be responsible for you puking all over the bed," Daniel told him, and then just stood there looking down at him, rumpled and unshaven and gazing at him with a kind of wide-eyed warmth. The moment held a little too long, enough to make something in Jack _flutter_ , and then Daniel wrenched away with a muttered, "I'm gonna get a doctor," and he grabbed his crutch where it leaned against the wall, and was gone.

So, as ways to wake up went, that wasn't a bad one. Things went in a rapid downhill slide when the doctor came back. He did some tests, starting with Jack's vitals and then spending a lot of time poking his feet with needles and tapping at his knees and asking him to move various parts of his body -- most of which responded like limp rags, but lying in bed for days would do that, Jack thought, wouldn't it? Maybe not, because the doc told Jack that the bullet had damaged his spine, and they weren't sure how much he was going to get back.

"How much _what,"_ Jack rasped, with all the vehemence he could manage while flat on his back in bed.

"Range of motion. I don't want to alarm you -- " Too late, Jack thought. "-- because we won't know anything for certain until the swelling's gone down."

"I can move my feet," Jack said desperately. "I felt that needle-prick thing you did." He wished wholeheartedly now that he'd been a little less honest about the way it actually felt, the way that a needle he could see with his own eyes was pin-sharp felt dull as a pine cone when it pressed into his foot.

"You have sensation. And you have some movement. That's a good sign. We're going to get you in physical therapy as quickly as possible."

"Good for me," Jack snarled.

He didn't realize until the doctor left and he noticed Daniel standing awkwardly in the doorway that Daniel had probably heard most of that.

"I got fucking _shot,"_ Jack snapped, and he wasn't even sure if he was talking to Daniel or himself. "I'm not just going to be able to jump out of the bed and dash off to the field again. It doesn't work like that."

"I know," Daniel said quietly.

His gentle tone put Jack's teeth on edge, not to mention that Daniel was still hovering in an awkward way that was making Jack's skin itch. "Can't a guy get some privacy?" he demanded, trying to forget that it hadn't even been half an hour since he'd felt on top of the world, waking up to find Daniel waiting for him.

"I'll send a nurse in, in case you need anything," Daniel told him, and took himself out.

Limping out, really, and didn't that make Jack feel like the world's biggest asshole. Because, even if he had an uphill road of PT ahead of him, he wasn't in the same boat as Daniel Sousa, and he felt guilty for how glad he was of that.

 

***

 

Recovery was miserable, and therapy was miserable. Jack had hated California before, but now he was developing an absolute loathing of the place.

He spent a week in the hospital, graduating slowly from being as weak as a newborn kitten, to actually being able to sit up and force himself to eat small quantities of the soft, bland foods they allowed him to have. His hands still shook, but that was slowly going away.

His legs, though. His God-damned _legs._

The doctors stayed focused on the positive, particularly the fact that he had nearly complete bowel and bladder control, which apparently was an excellent sign for his eventual prognosis. (Nearly complete meant that it fucking wasn't _always_ complete, but the couple of accidents he'd had were -- mercifully -- at times when he didn't have any visitors. Even so, he thought the humiliation might do him in. However, it seemed to improve vastly once they started weaning him off the heavy drugs ... a lot faster than anything else was improving.)

"Look, you're gonna take awhile to get back to full strength," the physical therapist told him. Jack didn't think he could have dealt with someone who tried to coddle him with gentle sympathy, but instead he got Butch, who was six feet and a former Marine, and drove him mercilessly on the parallel bars in the PT room. "You aren't just gonna run laps around the building. Your back's messed up, man. So's your chest, and that's not making things any easier. You can get it back, but it'll take awhile."

Slumped on a bench in the therapy room -- drenched in sweat with his chest feeling like it was splitting open, and too exhausted to even sit up straight -- Jack told him to go fuck himself, which made Butch laugh.

He knew he was improving, but what scared the shit out of him was how much improvement there still was to go. By the time he was cleared to leave the hospital, he'd gotten to where he could walk, shakily, with crutches. He had very little range of motion in his legs, and he couldn't stand up for long. Making things worse, as Butch liked to point out, was the fact that his chest was healing from surgery, and the assassin's bullet had cracked a couple of ribs on its destructive path to his spine. That made it difficult to wield the crutches, or hold himself up on the PT bars, or do any other damn thing.

Aside from the times when he was at PT, he'd had the company of either Daniel or Peggy for nearly every minute since he woke up. This was mainly because they wanted to keep a guard on him, and still weren't entirely sure who they could trust at the SSR. It was a damned mess, was what it was. Since they had to sleep sometime, they rotated through Daniel's complement of agents who were experienced enough not to shoot themselves in the foot, and trustworthy enough not to shoot Jack ... which wasn't very many of them.

Not like Jack could complain without being a hypocrite, though. At least Daniel was cleaning up the mess at the L.A. office. Jack still had the entire New York division to sort out once he got back. For now, he was trying to manage as much business as he could from his hospital bed, and had turned over the day-to-day affairs of the New York office to Agent Ramirez. Ramirez didn't have much administrative experience, but he'd been with the office as long as Jack had, and he was one of the few agents that Jack could be nearly 100% certain hadn't been taking kickbacks from Vernon. You learned a lot about a guy when you went into a firefight with him.

But he had no solid plans for what he was going to do when he got out of the hospital. In fact, he had no fucking clue. He wasn't well enough to get back to New York yet; short of a medical airlift, he didn't think he was capable of handling a cross-country flight. He figured he'd probably get a hotel room somewhere, hole up, and recuperate.

He wasn't expecting to get offers of a place to stay, separately, from both Peggy and Daniel. Maybe he should have been, since one or the other of them had been hanging around him almost constantly since he woke up, but it was still startling.

Peggy's offer was, predictably, straight to the point. "There's more than enough room at Howard's, Jack. It wouldn't be an imposition. You'd scarcely see the rest of us."

He told her he'd think about it, not expecting Daniel to make a similar offer later that same day, but in a very different way -- shy, almost. "Look, Jack, I have a house of my own. You'd have your own room and the place to yourself most of the day. There's no point in renting a room when you know people here." Daniel's smile flickered. "And I know you'd rather take it from me than from Stark."

"You don't know that," Jack shot back. He was still on edge, endlessly frustrated by the entire business (and especially by his body's ongoing tendency to fail him) and the fact that he'd seen so much of both Peggy and Daniel lately was only making it worse.

"Yeah, I do. Because I know _you."_

Which was how he somehow agreed to move in with Sousa when he got out of the hospital. Just on a temporary basis; just until he was ready to head back to New York.

Peggy seemed pleased. 

Aside from the two usual suspects, he'd had a few other visitors, including the handful of SSR agents who'd come over from New York (those who hadn't been caught up in Daniel's corruption sweeps, at least), and even the Jarvises once. He saw Wilkes a couple of times, picking up Peggy ... so that was how _that_ had worked out. Tough luck for Sousa. Daniel didn't seem particularly broken up about it, though.

When Jack left the hospital, he managed to hobble out on his double crutches. Daniel picked him up at the curb. For the first part of the drive Jack couldn't do much more than wilt, but after he got a little energy back, he found himself intrigued by the controls on the car. They'd been modified -- he noticed Daniel was using a hand lever when he shifted gears.

"How's that work?" he asked, nodding to it.

Daniel looked slightly embarrassed. "I had it modified. Clutch lever on the steering column, and then I operate the pedals with my left foot."

"I remember you driving the regular SSR cars in New York."

"I can. It's just tough." He hesitated before saying, "My foot tends to slide off the pedals."

Daniel wasn't usually that open about the specifics of what he went through with his injury. In fact, Jack thought as they pulled up in front of a tidy little bungalow on a tree-shaded street, it might be the first time he'd talked about it at all. On the infrequent occasions when Jack tried to bring it up back in New York, Daniel deflected him.

Maybe they trusted each other now.

Or maybe, in Daniel's mind, Jack's injury had brought him over to Daniel's side of the healthy-to-cripple divide ... and he really didn't like that at all.

"Well," Daniel said, pulling him back from bleak pondering, "here we are. Chez Sousa."

He reached into the back for Jack's suitcase without asking. They'd brought him his things in the hospital, after thoroughly examining them at the SSR, so at least he'd been able to get dressed properly before checking out. It wasn't like he could carry the damn thing on his own, so he concentrated on fumbling with the crutches.

He was sweating and exhausted again by the time he got up the stairs to Daniel's front door. It was going to be a long damn couple of weeks if he couldn't even walk from the car into the house without falling over.

Daniel set down the suitcase and unlocked the door. "Home sweet home," he remarked.

With the drapes closed, it seemed dark as a cave inside, Jack's eyes having adapted to the brilliant California sunshine. He blundered into something that appeared to be a sofa, and decided to sit down on it.

"There's a small guest bedroom in the back, and a larger one upstairs -- it's a converted attic," Daniel said from somewhere deeper in the house. "I thought you'd want the downstairs one, so you wouldn't have to deal with the stairs. Bathroom is between the two bedrooms, then the kitchen looks out on the back garden."

"You have a back garden?" Jack asked over his shoulder, unable to resist needling him. "What do you grow in it?"

"A good crop of weeds, at the moment," Daniel said dryly. "Violet was going to --" He broke off sharply. "I guess it doesn't matter what Violet was going to do."

Violet? With one thing and another, this was the first time Jack had actually had a chance to think about what Daniel had said weeks ago: that he was getting married. The absence of a fiancee, combined with the obvious resurgence of his crush on Peggy over the last few days, added up to an uncomfortable picture -- that not just one woman, but two, had turned him down lately.

Jack had a feeling that bringing it up (even in a sympathetic kind of way) really wouldn't go over well. Contrary to what some people claimed, he could keep his mouth shut when he wanted to, especially when it benefited him to do so -- and he was currently reliant on Daniel for a place to stay.

The thought occurred to him that this might be a disaster.

 

***

 

But it wasn't.

After an awkward day or two, in which a few ground rules were laid (such as "always close the bathroom door" and a few specifics regarding cleaning of common areas), they began to settle into something which might not precisely be _comfort,_ but was definitely acceptance of the new status quo. Daniel was at work most of the day, so, as he'd pointed out in the hospital, Jack had the house to himself. The only place Jack went was to PT. Unable to drive himself yet, he took a cab.

Jack started out with an utter loathing of appearing incapable in front of Daniel. At least in the hospital, he'd been able to avoid feeling that way too much, on the simple principle that, as a convalescent, he was _supposed_ to be in a hospital bed. Now that he was staying with Daniel, there was no way he could avoid having Daniel see him doing his PT exercises, no way Daniel wasn't going to know that Jack -- who used to be first in and last out of the New York office -- was now sleeping sixteen hours a day.

For the first couple of days he tried to achieve a semblance of normalcy, forcing himself to be up, shaved, and dressed before Daniel left, and working on the repetitive and painful exercises in his room with the door shut when Daniel wasn't there. But this effort quickly broke down. He only had a limited amount of energy, and he was pushing most of it into rehabilitating himself. He was _not_ going to deal with the damned crutches forever. He wasn't even going to deal with them for months, which was what the doctors thought. And if that meant doing step-up/step-down exercises in the living room, or crutching back and forth in the house to strengthen his legs in full view of Daniel, until his entire body trembled with the strain and sweat poured off him and his chest felt like someone had taken a hammer to it -- then Daniel was just going to damn well have to deal with it.

Daniel didn't say a word.

It didn't really help to contemplate the fact that Daniel was the one person he knew who really _did_ understand. Carter didn't; she was sympathetic (and stopped by almost daily to bring case files and keep him updated on how the investigation was going) but she didn't know what it felt like to be facing a future that might or might not include the full use of her body. At least she wasn't trying to ladle sympathy onto him. She was brisk and professional, friendly but without the soppy pity that he found himself unconsciously expecting.

Aside from his legs, there was still the matter that someone might be gunning for him. They didn't know if the shooting was related to the Arena Club investigation, to something else entirely involving the missing M. Carter file, or to one of the other cases he'd been working on; it wasn't as if he had any shortage of enemies. But the motive was still unknown and the shooter was at large.

Jack carried a gun with him everywhere. He took it to PT, hidden under a fold of his jacket in the corner while he worked on the parallel bars and in the pool. He wore his shoulder holster in the house, over his undershirt. Sometimes in the bathroom, when Daniel wasn't home, he practiced drawing it and pointing it at himself in the mirror until he could do that without getting the shakes. He was willing to tolerate Daniel seeing his physical weakness, because he had no choice, but he wasn't about to mention to anybody how much the shooting had messed with his head. He needed to be able to put it behind him in order to go back out in the field; there was no choice. So he worked on that in private, another kind of rehabilitation, and sweated through the nightmares in the privacy of the little bedroom tucked at the back of Daniel's house.

It made him feel less of a freak to notice that Daniel usually had a gun at hand, too, the holster hanging on a chair back when he was in the kitchen, or the gun lying on an end table in the living room while he read. Jack wasn't sure if this was a new development because of the shooting and the ongoing corruption investigation, or if Daniel was always that paranoid, but it made him feel marginally more secure to have both of them on guard.

Having Daniel around was ... interesting. He hadn't lived closely with anyone else since the war. As a roommate, Daniel turned out to be a quiet and unobtrusive one, which wasn't a surprise. Daniel liked the house to stay tidy, but Jack also inclined toward the "clean" rather than "slovenly" school of bachelorhood, so they didn't have any major incompatibility along those lines.

But he hadn't expected the effect it would have on him, being in close proximity to Daniel day after day. He'd worked with the guy, after all. But he wasn't used to seeing Daniel in a relaxed setting, sleepy and tousled in the morning, or exhausted and stripped down to his T-shirt in the evening. He wasn't prepared to have a nightmare and get up only to find Daniel in the kitchen, for probably the same reason, greeting him with a sleepy smile and reaching to pour him a pot of coffee.

It wasn't so much that Daniel was attractive. Jack had plenty of experience at being around attractive guys without giving anything away. It was worse than that ... it was the whole general _Daniel-ness_ of him. Daniel was fucking _adorable,_ and it really annoyed Jack that he'd managed to forget that during the six months Daniel had been across the country.

Daniel was funny and smart and kind, and Jack didn't think it was just his imagination that Daniel had warmed up to him noticeably since the hospital. He _had_ almost died, but before that had been the Vernon Masters mess, and the bomb ... and he would've expected Daniel to be pulling away, not getting closer.

He wasn't prepared to have those warm smiles turned in his direction, or to find Daniel watching him at odd moments.

And he didn't _want_ it to mean as much as it did the first time he wandered into the kitchen to find Daniel leaning on the counter with his leg off, just a pair of pajama pants tied over the stump and the crutch leaned up beside him. Daniel gave him a look that dared him to say anything about it, and Jack just went for the coffeepot in silence. After that, Daniel didn't seem to try so hard not to be seen without his legs and trousers on. Jack got the general impression that Daniel probably went legless around the house a lot, and the fact that Daniel was no longer hiding it from him was ... well, it was something. It made him feel less weird about doing his exercises where Daniel might walk in on him.

But he still didn't know what he was going to do about the way that his heart flipped over and his stomach swooped when Daniel grinned at him. He had a goddamn schoolboy _crush_ , and it was annoying the hell out of him, especially since it was perfectly obvious from both Violet and Peggy that Daniel wasn't like Jack. Daniel was a normal American male who preferred the company of the female sex, and who could blame him? He'd made his offer out of friendship, not realizing the effect that being in close proximity to him, day in and day out, was going to have on Jack. In all fairness, Jack hadn't realized it either. 

He'd had a very slight crush on Daniel back in New York, before Daniel moved across the country, but he'd also known full well that it wasn't ever going to come to anything, and he wasn't sure if he even wanted it to. This, though ... this was developing into a full-blown something-or-other, and it was going to come to a head sooner or later. And when it did, Jack knew, it would blow up everything.

He just hoped he could be well enough to get out of town by then.


	3. Daniel

Watching Jack deal with the crutches and his newly recalcitrant legs was unexpectedly difficult. It brought back a lot of memories Daniel had managed to push down and stored in a dark corner of his mind to be dealt with ... well, never, if he could help it. Even worse than watching Jack go through the painful grind of PT, though, was the slow, visible improvement, day by day, which was an intermittent sandpaper-on-skin reminder of the fact that Jack was getting better, and would eventually be back to a hundred percent, while Daniel never would.

He didn't _want_ to think that way, but there it was.

He was the one who'd offered his home for Jack's recovery, though, and he wasn't enough of a louse to make it miserable for him. Besides, once he got past the weirdness of having someone else (especially Jack Thompson) invading his space, he'd started to enjoy having Jack around. Damn, but it was _nice_ to have someone to come home to at night, even if it was only a roommate. It was nice to see the house lit up, nice to walk through the door to the smell of fresh coffee and sometimes, on a good day, something-or-other burning on the stove. It was nice to have someone to talk to in the mornings, and someone to split the chores of washing dishes and scrubbing bathrooms.

Truth be told, he never would have guessed that sharing a house with Jack Thompson would be this _easy._ They butted heads a few times, but for the most part the sniping was playful rather than nasty, and in general the whole experience was more like the good parts of working with Jack than the bad parts.

Jack had been an absolute bear in the hospital, but he'd loosened up a lot once he got out. Daniel wasn't even sure if Jack himself was aware of the visible change in himself. After Jack had a day or two for it to sink in that he was away from the hospital, he'd survived, and he was slowly but surely getting better, he'd perked up a lot. Despite his wan pallor and ongoing tendency to get exhausted easily, he seemed happy, and Daniel sometimes caught Jack just _looking_ at him, smiling in a distracted kind of way.

Which made him think again of that night in New York -- of touching Jack's lips in the hospital, and holding his cold hand, and willing him to _wake up_ , no matter what came of it ...

God.

He hadn't been with a man since the Army. He hadn't _wanted_ to be with a man since the Army. He had written off that part of his life as an aberration, something that would never have happened if there had been women around, and if they all hadn't been constantly under fire, exhausted, saving each other's lives ... Of _course_ men were going to develop unnatural attachments to each other under those circumstances. Both of his male ... lovers, if that was the word, had died in the war, and Daniel had grieved them as one would grieve any lost friend -- but that was _it,_ that wasn't something he'd meant to carry back from the war with him.

And then ... Jack.

Jack, who shouldn't have been any sort of threat to Daniel's masculinity at all, at least not in that particular way. Jack, who was too annoying to _live_ , and certainly not a person Daniel wanted to have in his personal space.

Except for the way Jack had somehow burrowed in when he wasn't looking -- getting into Daniel's fantasies (which, these days, were a lot less about putting Jack in his place, and a lot more about making his eyes light up in the way they did when he was genuinely happy), getting into Daniel's house, getting into his _life._

He came home from the office one evening to the completely unexpected sight of Ana Jarvis in the living room, playing cribbage with Jack using a cribbage board Daniel had forgotten he owned. The house smelled amazing.

"Chief Sousa," Ana cried, beaming at him. "Have a kifli." She held a basket out to him, containing a number of crescent-shaped pastries. "There is a pot of _gulyás_ in the kitchen."

"She brought food," Jack said, unnecessarily.

So he spent the evening playing cribbage with Jack and Ana, eating Hungarian food and drinking beer, and generally enjoying himself enough to forget about the case, the precarious state of the SSR, and everything else weighing on his mind. It was late in the evening when Ana finally left, after whipping them both repeatedly at cribbage, waving her cheery way out the door and leaving them with enough food to last for the next two days.

"Why is it that so many of the women we know are like forces of nature?" Daniel asked, getting up to take their bowls into the kitchen. "All the rest of us can do is get swept along and try not to be run over."

Jack snorted, and levered himself to his feet. For moving short distances around the house, he'd graduated from the two crutches to a single cane, though he was still very unsteady and often surreptitiously grabbed onto the furniture. "Just lucky, I guess."

In the kitchen, Daniel ran water into the sink while Jack moved around slowly, putting things away. In just the short time he'd been staying with Daniel, he had already gotten a firm grasp on how Daniel had things arranged in the house -- and, contrary to some of Daniel's morbid imaginings about how the roommate situation might go, Jack seemed to be really trying to be a well-behaved houseguest. Daniel washed the bowls and passed them to Jack, who dried them with a dish towel, and they worked in a companionable silence until Jack said suddenly, "So how are you and Carter getting along these days?"

Daniel glanced at him, not quite sure how to take that. "Fine. We're friends. Why?"

"And you're okay with being friends."

Daniel set a soapy bowl down in the sink with a loud clunk. "I was _always_ fine with being friends."

"Right, that's why you ran off to L.A."

The old Daniel would've let himself be baited, but instead, his irritation ebbed; he was more curious what had brought this on. They'd both been drinking; it might be the first time Jack had had more than an occasional nip of whisky since the shooting. Daniel didn't feel drunk, maybe just a little loose, but he was starting to get the impression that Jack might be, and it was with more curiosity than annoyance that he turned to face him. "Where is this coming from, Jack?"

Confronted, Jack backed down. "I don't know," he said sharply, taking the bowl. "Just figured I never got the postscript to the epic romance of Carter and Sousa."

"That's not rinsed yet." Daniel caught the bowl, and his soapy fingers slid over Jack's, who let go so quickly that the bowl twisted away from both of them. Daniel made a wild grab for it, saw Jack's hand start in a reflexive sweep which changed to clutching at the counter when he nearly went over. The bowl shattered on the floor.

They both looked at the smashed shards for a minute: Jack hanging onto the counter, Daniel getting his leg under him properly after nearly overbalancing in his attempt to catch the bowl. Then Jack shook his head. "Some pair we are," he said in a disgusted tone. He snatched up his cane and wobbled out to the living room.

Daniel stared after him before reaching for the broom.

He got the glass cleaned up and finished the dishes, turning it over in his head. He felt like there were puzzle pieces missing. He understood the anger, because he'd felt plenty of it himself; he just didn't understand what had set it off, or why.

When he limped out of the kitchen, he expected to find Jack's door closed and Jack in bed, at least pretending to sleep. Instead, Jack was sitting on the living room couch with a glass of whisky in his hand, slumped and rumpled, having given up all pretense of not being drunk.

Daniel sighed and plopped down on the other end of the couch. Before he could say anything, Jack said, "Sorry I broke your bowl."

"It's okay. I bought 'em secondhand when I moved here. That one was chipped anyway."

Jack flashed him a slight smile, and reached for the bottle to slop some more into the bottom of his glass. His hand shook a little as he did it, an unpleasant reminder that he wasn't long out of the hospital. 

Daniel squashed down the urge to mother-hen him on health grounds; he wouldn't have appreciated it himself. Instead he said mildly, "You're gonna hate yourself in the morning."

"As opposed to hating myself tonight?" Jack asked with a twisted smile.

Damn, he really _must_ be drunk. Daniel stared at him for a moment, and then scooted over closer to him on the couch. "Got a second glass?"

"Here." Jack handed him the glass he'd been drinking out of. "I'll keep the bottle."

There wasn't much left in the bottom of the bottle; Daniel decided it was easier to let him than to fight about it. He took a sip, unable to avoid thinking about the fact that Jack's lips had been on the rim of the glass just a moment earlier. The cheap whisky burned a trail down to his stomach.

Jack was contemplating the amber liquid in the bottle, his brow furrowed. Daniel reached out and touched his arm. "You okay?"

He expected Jack to revert back to glossy smiles and deflection; instead he got a weary sigh. "Yeah," Jack said. "Just thinking."

"Don't strain yourself."

This got a pained smile. "Hope you're not quitting your day job for the vaudeville circuit, Sousa. Comedy's not your strong suit."

The silence that fell on them was more relaxed this time, and finally Daniel said, "Yeah, I hoped there was a future for me and Peggy. But it didn't work out that way, and you know, I really _am_ okay with it. Wilkes is a great guy, when he's not trying to kill us, and any fool can see they're happy together."

Jack nodded, and took another drink. "She lands on her feet, Peggy does."

"Usually," Daniel said, wondering where this was going. "But she doesn't do it alone. Nobody does."

Silence. Daniel thought about leaving it alone, but it didn't feel right. Instead he gave Jack another light shove in the arm.

"Come on, what's eating you? It's not Peggy. That's just you trying to get my goat, and I know what you're up to, so it's not gonna work." When Jack tried to duck his gaze, Daniel went for the direct approach. "Jack. Talk to me."

Jack sagged against the back of the couch. "I _can't,"_ he said, sounding raw and oddly young.

Daniel hadn't known what to expect, but that wasn't it. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I can't. It's ..." He shook his head and gestured aimlessly with the bottle. "I don't think I'm going back to the SSR," he said suddenly, the words pushed out in a fast tumble.

Daniel leaned his elbows on his knees and thought his way carefully past the first responses that came to mind. "Why not?" he asked gently.

"You _know_ why not." Staring into the distance rather than at Daniel, Jack struck himself in the thigh with his fist. " _These._ It's not coming back, Daniel. Not like I want it to."

"Jack, for God's sake, you were shot three weeks ago. You said it yourself, you can't just jump out of bed after an injury like that. I've seen how far you've come in that time."

"Yeah, how far is that, really?" The level gaze he turned on Daniel was full of misery. "I can limp around the house. Big fucking deal. I can't walk around the block without crutches. Hell, I can barely do it _with_ crutches; feels like my heart's gonna rip its way out of my chest. Can't drive a car, can't hold a gun without getting the shakes -- And ... I shouldn't even be talking to you about this, because you're --" He shook his head, and looked away.

"Crippled?" Daniel said, without rancor.

Jack shook his head sharply. "That's the worst part, you know? Every damn thing you've done ... you know, when I first saw you at the SSR, I thought ..." He hesitated, then bit out the words with a fiercely bitter undercurrent of anger that was, Daniel suspected, directed at himself. "I thought, who let _him_ in here? Thought you were a -- a pity hire, thought the Chief couldn't bring himself to turn away a fellow Army guy ..." He risked a glance at Daniel, his face wounded, but if he was looking for condemnation, Daniel didn't think he found it. "And now, look at you. Chief of the West Coast SSR. I'd like to say you haven't earned it, but it'd be a lie; we both know you worked your ass off for it, damn well earned it more than _I_ did. And now look at _me._ Can't walk up a flight of stairs without breaking into a sweat and having to sit down ..."

"Jack." Daniel had had enough. He caught Jack's hand, the one that was gesturing with the bottle so wildly he was in danger of spilling it. Daniel transferred the bottle to the coffee table, and shifted his grip to Jack's forearm. "You know where I was three weeks after I got _this?_ " He flicked a glance down at his own leg. "You want to talk about being a mess? Because I was. You know, there are still times when I can't watch you doing those damned exercises? Because it brings it back ..." He had to stop, breathing harshly. He just didn't _talk_ about this stuff. Not even with Peggy.

He still had a grip on Jack's arm, and Jack was looking at him, gazing into his face like he was trying to find something to hook his anchor onto.

"You're not me," Daniel said quietly, after taking a moment to get himself under control. "And I'm not you. What happened to you isn't what happened to me, and where it goes from here -- I don't know. That's not something either of us is really in control of. But I've seen how hard you're working on getting your legs back. Hell, I saw how hard you worked -- _work_ \-- as chief of the New York SSR. I didn't like how you got the job -- and I know one reason you made sure I packed my bags for L.A. was because you didn't want to be reminded --" Jack opened his mouth, but Daniel spoke over the top of him. "Don't. We both know it's true. Just like we both know it's true that Peggy was one reason, maybe the biggest reason I came out here. But ... that's the past. All of it. You're good at what you do. And when it came right down to it, with the Vernon thing, you took the right side, and I know how hard that must've been." He paused; Jack was still looking at him with that strange, searching expression, and Daniel's hand was still on Jack's arm. 

"Don't write yourself off," Daniel said at last, gently. "Some people make things look easy. Peggy does. But I know her well enough to know that it's _not_ easy for her, and I think you do too."

Jack looked at him for what seemed like a long while, his lips slightly parted; then he flexed his hand, and Daniel, self-conscious, let his hand drop away from Jack's arm.

"Can I ...?" Jack began. He hesitated. His hand made an abortive move toward Daniel's leg before pulling back.

It was like that night in New York: it seemed they were poised on the edge of something, and this time, Daniel was too curious not to go along with it. "Okay," he said.

Cautiously, almost shyly, Jack put his hand on Daniel's artificial knee. Just feeling it, through the fabric of Daniel's trousers. 

The last person to touch Daniel like that had been Violet. People just ... didn't. Still, it wasn't quite sexual, not in the way that someone (anyone) having their hand on his leg like that should normally have been. Obviously, he couldn't feel it. But it was emotionally charged, not only having someone else in his space like that, but allowing them to touch him _there._

Daniel wasn't sure where Jack meant to go from there, and realized as Jack paused in that position that Jack wasn't, either.

Daniel thought, _The worst he can do is hit me,_ and leaned over and kissed him.

It was a light kiss, quick and gentle, a swift brush of lips. When he pulled back, Jack was looking at him wide-eyed, and Daniel felt his stomach drop hard -- maybe he'd read the signs all wrong, and he realized in that instant that he had a whole lot more to lose than just Jack's trust ... important things, like, say, _his entire career._

Then Jack put his hand under Daniel's chin and pulled him in for another kiss.

This was longer and more heated, clashing teeth and warm breath and the taste of whisky. Daniel was expecting an edge of aggressiveness, because it was Jack, and he wasn't wrong -- but what he didn't expect at the end of the kiss was Jack throwing an arm around him and dragging him in, crushing Daniel against him and just holding him for a little while.

"You're drunk," Daniel said, breathy and laughing against his neck. There was no way Jack would be this affectionate if he wasn't. In fact, they probably wouldn't even have made it this far.

"So fucking what," Jack said into his hair, and kissed him again -- on his forehead, temple, the side of his face. The brushes of his lips were light and gentle and full of affection, as if the dam had broken and there was a lifetime's pent-up tenderness behind it.

And Daniel thought, _What the hell,_ and let go of his objections, his worries, the part of his brain that couldn't stop saying _what if_ and _but we shouldn't_ \-- and let go, let himself give in to what Jack wanted to give him.

It felt like a very long time since he'd let himself just fall into someone's arms.

 

***

 

Later, a long time later, it turned out that neither Daniel's leg nor Jack's injury was much of an impediment to anything they might have in mind, when adequately motivated.

They fell asleep in Daniel's bed, with Jack's hand curled over the scarred skin of Daniel's right thigh.


	4. Jack

For a guy who was currently on medical leave, staying in someone else's spare bedroom a continent away from the city where he lived and worked, Jack really thought he shouldn't be so damn _happy._

But he was.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd had someone to touch him with affection, and even -- he could think it, if not say it -- with love. It shouldn't have surprised him that Daniel loved in the same way he did everything else; it might take Daniel time to work his way to a decision, but when he did it, he committed all the way.

For a long time, sex for Jack had been frantic and angry, one part urgent release and one part self-punishment, darkened by the constant fear of discovery. He'd paid for it, usually, picking men up in fairy bars. The last time he'd been in love was in college, before the war, a time that seemed impossibly far away to him now. He'd forgotten what it was like, the heady rush and the stomach-flipping delight of it. 

And even in those days of youthful crushes, he couldn't remember being in love like this; it wasn't just the rush of brand-new, head-over-heels attraction, but he also _liked_ Daniel, even admired him in some ways. He loved talking to him, their old rivalry having metamorphosed into an intellectual tug-of-war that was exhilarating. Daniel was smart and bright and funny and brave. There was a part of Jack that kept waiting for the other shoe to drop -- waiting (why not be honest with himself) for the day when he'd fuck this up just like he did everything else.

And he still had periods of anger and doubt, times when he raged against the limitations of his body and imagined a future as an invalid, unable to support himself, a shadow of the man he used to be.

But he _was_ getting better. The doctors were still cagy about his long-term prospects, cautioning him not to be overly optimistic (as if). His physical therapy appointments had been cut back to twice a week, because, as Butch pointed out, there wasn't much more the therapist could do for him at this stage of his recovery. From here it was largely a matter of building his strength back up, and learning to compensate for the lingering nerve damage to his spine.

As well as the cutback in his PT appointments, he also had more energy; he was no longer dragging himself around the house, struggling not to collapse from fatigue after his exercises. He was starting to feel a little more like himself again, and that led to climbing the walls, needing to get back into the action in some way.

Daniel brought home an entire box of case files. "Go for it," he said, and turned over the the shooting, its aftermath, and related avenues of investigation to Jack.

He'd already seen the crime scene photos -- he'd insisted on it -- but now he pored over them with new determination, feeling oddly detached from his connection to the scene. It didn't seem as if it was _his_ blood that he was looking at.

Daniel and Peggy had been thorough, though. He'd love to have found fault with their investigation, but he couldn't. Peggy had gone so far as to fly to England in pursuit of the file's history; Jack had had no idea.

She probably couldn't have gotten away with it if she'd gone through regular channels, rather than just (in true Peggy fashion) hopping on a plane and turning in receipts later. The SSR was in a state of budget emergency. Actually, while Jack didn't think Daniel had been trying to keep anything from him, he hadn't realized until now the full state of the hot water that the SSR was in.

Every day seemed to bring more revelations of corruption, within the agency and without. Pulling the curtain away from the Arena Club's dirty deeds had unleashed a media frenzy, and with the increased scrutiny bringing a flurry of newspaper stories and lawsuits, pillars of the community were toppling at the highest levels. 

In the process, the SSR had made itself some powerful enemies. The War Department was riddled with Vernon's cronies, and those who had managed to stop themselves from falling along with Vernon were not inclined to look kindly on the agency that had poked a thumb in their collective eye. Right now the odds of the SSR's funding being renewed next fiscal year were not looking good.

For the second time in the past few months, Jack found himself seriously contemplating life beyond the SSR -- but it was a very different life he was thinking about this time. Vernon's promises of a political career had turned out to be nothing but glittering facades held up by a framework of lies. It wasn't that he'd given up on those dreams entirely ... he still felt the attraction. But ...

 _You don't need to cut corners to get ahead,_ Peggy had told him once. _You're better than that._

At the very least, he'd had it impressed upon him that skipping rungs on the ladder of success just meant that much farther to fall when you tumbled back down. Watching the implosion of the Arena Club's web of power and deceit had been instructive, to say the least.

He really _liked_ working for the SSR, damn it. He'd never realized how much he liked it until he teetered on the edge of losing it. All he'd ever really wanted to do was defend his country and help people, and even if he'd lost sight of it along the way, he was slowly realizing that it was still as true now as it had been when he'd signed up for the Navy as an impossibly idealistic college student.

So ... there were other options. The FBI, the CIA ... there were places he could apply. Whether they'd take him in his current condition -- or whatever his condition might be six months from now, whenever the SSR finished its slow-motion collapse -- was something he'd have to figure out when the time came. And he still wasn't sure if he was going to be able to handle himself in the field, legs or no legs.

Or whether he could convince Daniel to go with him ...

But for now, he was weirdly content, living with Daniel in a quiet little house on a quiet little street, doing desk work and putting out fires at the New York SSR over the phone -- and still getting that flip-flop feeling in his stomach when Daniel smiled at him.

They were sharing a bedroom now, but beyond that, surprisingly little had changed, other than an increased tendency to get into each others' personal space. Like his future beyond the SSR, this was something Jack was trying not to plan out in too much depth, given how quickly things could change. He'd written off his old schoolboy feelings as callow crushes, because he hadn't believed that falling in love was something that really happened to men like him -- not like _this,_ not this pushed-off-a-cliff feeling. And men like him weren't supposed to get happy endings either ... but, if he was going to hope for getting his legs back, why not hope for that too? Or better yet, he could just not think about it -- defer it, push it back, handle each day as it came and let the future take care of itself.

He was out in the backyard, pulling weeds around the rock-edged border of the garden, when an amused female voice said, "Chief Jack Thompson, gardener. I never thought I'd see the day."

Instinct had him reaching for the shoulder holster he still wore around the house, but the familiarity of that voice caught up with him as his hand settled on the butt of his service weapon. He turned to scowl at Peggy Carter, who was standing in the doorway, one hand on her hip and the other holding a file folder. She looked amused.

"How did you get in?"

"I _am_ a spy, you know," she pointed out. "I did try knocking, but no one answered. It doesn't take an act of high-class espionage to know that Daniel keeps a spare key under the loose board on the corner of the porch."

Jack really needed to have a talk with Daniel about home security. "For your information, it's a mess back here and it was driving me nuts, having to look at it out the window every day. Figured I'd do Danny-boy a favor and clean it up."

She made a noncommittal "mmm" noise. "Well, if you think you could leave off the yardwork for a while and come in the house, there's something I wanted to go over with you."

He reached for the cane and levered himself to his feet. It was getting easier; he still had a little trouble getting up and down, but he could get around in the house, and was getting better at going for cane-assisted walks without needing the crutches at all. After a full day's activity, he still needed the cane, even in the house -- but he wasn't about to collapse, which would have been the case at one point.

There was a time when he would almost have died rather than let Peggy see him walking around the house with a cane, but he simply gave her a level, "I don't care" expression and stumped into the house, daring her to say something about it. Which she didn't, of course. Jack poured himself a glass of water at the sink.

"There's coffee, if you want it. And I think there's some tea from the last time Mrs. Jarvis came over." Ana's visits were a regular feature of their routine now; she came over once or twice a week, bearing covered dishes and board games.

Peggy found the teabags, and a kettle tucked at the back of a cupboard (unused since Ana's last visit as well), and filled it. "I wanted to talk to both you and Daniel, but I hoped to catch you before Daniel came home."

"Well, that's not ominous at all." He poured himself a cup of coffee and considered adding a jot of whisky to it. Conversations with Peggy often required liquid fortification. "Aren't you two working together right now?"

"More or less. I'm in and out. But you're still my boss, Jack, and I wanted to take this up the chain of command before going to Daniel about it."

"I'm amazed you remember there _is_ a chain of command," he remarked, taking the folder that she offered him.

He couldn't help thinking uncomfortably that the last time someone had handed him a folder with mysterious contents, it had ended up getting him shot. Somehow he didn't think that Peggy approaching him on the lowdown was likely to make this one any less dangerous.

The edge of the folder read PROJECT SHIELD. "What's Shield?" Jack asked.

"A codename," Peggy said. "It doesn't really mean anything; I just needed to call it _something,_ preferably something that wouldn't raise eyebrows and catch attention. Go on, take a look."

He flipped it open and looked through the top few pages while Peggy made her tea. Most of it was dry reading -- figures and charts. But Jack had been running the New York SSR for over a year. He knew what he was looking at.

"This is the bare bones of a proposal for a new federal agency," he said slowly.

Peggy beamed. "You're mostly right. Not a _federal_ agency. Something like the SSR, but financed by private investors, beholden to no government."

Jack lowered the folder to stare at her. "You ... want to start your own private spy agency?"

"Well, it sounds quite mad when you put it that way."

"It _is_ mad! I've never heard of anything like that. It's --" He started to say "impossible," breaking off only as he realized that no word in the English language was more likely to commit Peggy to her current course of insanity. "A very bad idea," he finished weakly.

"I don't see why," Peggy said, taking a sip of her tea. "And if you think it's unprecedented, you're quite mistaken. I happen to know several freelance spies ran their own spy rings during the war. During every war, in fact. Espionage is not solely a matter for governments."

"Yes, but the word for it when freelancers do it is _treason."_

She continued as if he hadn't spoken. "Besides, espionage would not be the greatest aim of this agency, whatever we choose to call it. The goal of the SSR, sadly lost though it's become in political maneuverings, is to protect people. And that's what we would do, Jack. Protect people from threats like HYDRA and Whitney Frost, from the dangers that are not quite natural, things that regular government agencies are not equipped to handle."

"I thought I heard 'we'," Jack said.

"Of course I don't intend to do it _alone,"_ Peggy said brightly. "Now that _would_ be mad. I'm going to need people with both administrative and field experience, and who better than the current Chiefs of the SSR?"

"I feel as if I'm being set up."

"I wouldn't say _that._ What I'm offering is an alternative to the SSR. And I think we both know the SSR's days are numbered. As an agency, it's on its way out. Wouldn't you like to be part of the next big thing?"

"You know, the last person who said something like that to me was Vernon Masters, and look how _that_ turned out."

Her face softened. He wasn't expecting the warm, sympathetic look she turned on him. "Vernon played on your ambitions and weaknesses, and used you in a way that's utterly criminal. I swear to you, Jack, I intend nothing of the sort. I want to give you an opportunity to do good in the world."

Damn the woman.

 

***

 

When Daniel came home, they had their heads together over the contents of the file, spread out on the coffee table.

"No, no -- Peggy -- you keep forgetting we aren't going to have anything like the SSR budget, not at first. I don't care if Stark's involved. We have to start small, expand our reach -- oh, hi, Daniel."

"Hi," Daniel said warily. He set a large paper bag on the sideboard. "I brought takeout, but no one told me we had a guest for dinner. So _that's_ where you got off to. I was looking for you around the office today."

"I think you're going to need coffee for this," Jack said, and lurched to his feet.

When he came back with the pot, it was to Daniel sitting across from Peggy with a handful of papers, saying, "This is the craziest idea I ever heard of."

"I hope you're right," Peggy said. "Because in that case, it'll be just crazy enough that the War Department won't see it coming until we've already done it."

"What's this 'we'?" Daniel looked up as Jack stopped at his elbow to pour a cup of coffee. "Jack, did she say 'we'?"

"Afraid she did." Jack shoved the coffee cup into Daniel's hand. He noticed Peggy's eyes following the light brush of their knuckles. Well, it was inevitable that she was going to figure it out sooner or later, especially if they were all going to be working together. And for once, contrary to his usual habits, he was pretty sure Peggy could be trusted with this secret, along with the others she was carrying for him.

Actually ... come to think of it, one big advantage to going into business for themselves was that he no longer had quite so much to lose if the truth of his relationship with Daniel _did_ come out. There were still things at stake: reputation, for one, not to mention the risk of possible criminal charges. But he had a feeling that he and Daniel could shelter behind the shield (ha) of Stark's money for quite some time.

Jack took a chair beside Daniel, feeling lighter than he had in a long time. Daniel started arguing logistics with Peggy, and Jack grinned to himself. Daniel was in ... as Jack had known he would be.

Later that night, after Peggy was gone, they lay in bed together with the sheet pushed down and a light sweat from the night's activities drying on their bodies.

"Only Peggy Carter," Daniel said suddenly.

"Only Peggy Goddamn Carter," Jack agreed. He rolled over and propped up his chin in his hand. "What do you think, Danny? In the mood for a career change?"

"How many times have I told you not to call me that? Besides ... from what I'm getting, it's not going to be that much of a career change after all. We'll still be doing exactly what we did; it's just that instead of doing it for the U.S. government, we'll be doing it for the greater good."

"More like for Peggy and her cronies," Jack pointed out.

" _We're_ also her cronies. Don't forget that. Jack ..." Daniel rolled over too, invading Jack's personal space. "Would you be okay taking orders from Peggy? Tell the truth, now."

Jack snorted. "The woman may be technically working for me, but when was the last time you or I _didn't_ snap to when she gave an order?"

Daniel laughed, and caught his wrist with the surprising strength he was sometimes capable of -- though now that Jack had gone through PT himself, it wasn't as surprising as it used to be. Yanking Jack's arm out from under him, he pulled Jack on top of him.

"You know," Daniel said a long time later, when they were half tangled in the sheets and spread out on the bed again, "if we weren't on the federal government's string, this wouldn't be as much of a ..."

"Yeah, I thought of that too." In the dark, he reached out to lazily brush his fingertips across Daniel's lips. Daniel batted his hand away, but then caught it, lacing their fingers together.

"I think we can tell Peggy," Daniel said quietly. "I don't think she'd look at us different for it. And Peggy's good at secrets."

"I know. One of these days." And one of these days, maybe he'd tell Daniel his _other_ secret -- but not now. Not when things between them were still new, and all too easy to break.

Because he really didn't want to break this. Not now. Not ever.

"Project Shield," Daniel mused.

"Bet you a ten-spot she had Captain Rogers in mind when she named it."

Daniel laughed -- a light, easy laugh, and that was the moment when Jack knew, really _knew,_ that Daniel and Peggy -- the possibility of Daniel and Peggy, together -- was as done as Daniel claimed. That entire complicated history, weighted with Peggy's grief for Steve Rogers, and with Daniel's longing for her, was finally hidden behind a closed door.

 _Now_ was the two of them, here, on this bed.

And the future was ... what? Still a question mark, but looking a lot more hopeful than it had a day ago, Jack thought.

"I say we start a pool to come up with a set of initials that fits it."

"It's a secret, you ass," Daniel pointed out.

"Secret. That'd be good for the S. Secret ... High Command ... no, too long, and not really Peggy-esque enough. Headquarters. Heartland --"

"Homeland?" Daniel suggested.

"Good one. Secret Homeland ... God, now we need an 'I'. International?"

"Secret Homeland International? That makes a lot of sense."

"It makes as much sense as Peggy starting her own private spy agency, but here we all are." Jack lazily reached out and sank his fingers into one of the knocked-askew pillows, picked it up and dropped it in the general vicinity of Daniel's face. A garbled protest let him know he'd hit his mark. "If you don't like my suggestions, try contributing instead of heckling."

"Some Have Idiotic, Exasperating Lovers to Deal with," Daniel said promptly, emphasizing the capitals, and smacked him with the pillow.


	5. Epilogue

It seemed to Peggy that she'd just fallen into a deep and relaxing sleep, after staying up half the night with a cup of tea and a heap of file folders, when Jason was nudging her awake.

"This had better be an emergency," she groaned, dredging herself out of the dregs of sleep.

"Phone for you," Jason said. "It's Chief Thompson."

"Why is he calling me _here?"_ All manner of dreadful possibilities ran through her head as she belted her robe about her waist -- another attack on Jack, an international emergency, something happening to Daniel ...

With panic clearing the cobwebs of sleep from her mind, she picked up the phone in the hall. "This is Carter. What's happening?"

"Peggy, we named your agency for you," Jack said without preamble. In the background, she could hear Daniel laughing.

"What? It's two in the bloody morning!"

"Strategic Homeland --"

"I don't _care!"_

"-- International -- what was the fourth thing? Daniel?"

"I'm having Howard's number changed in the morning," Peggy said flatly.

"Extra -- something -- come on, Daniel, we _had_ something for this. Anyway, Logistics --"

"Shield isn't the name of the agency, you wankers. It's a code name."

"Department," Jack finished triumphantly.

"Division," she heard Daniel disagreeing in the background.

"No," Jack retorted, slightly muffled -- he must have put his hand over the receiver. "It's _department_. We decided."

" _We_ didn't decide, _you_ decided. Division sounds better."

"Do I get a say in this?" Peggy wanted to know.

"It's not a division _of_ anything," Jack argued.

"It's not a department of anything either!" Daniel shot back.

"I'm hanging up now," Peggy declared, and did so. 

She marched back to bed. "Prank call," she told Jason flatly, passing him in the hall as he headed with a cup of coffee back down to the labs, and retreated into her room and the welcoming arms of her bed.

Still, she thought as she drifted off to sleep, it wasn't as if she _had_ a name for the agency yet ... not that she wanted to encourage them ... still, if she could come up with something that wasn't utterly _ludicrous_ to pin those initials on ...

It could work, she thought. It could work.


End file.
